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Did Thanos actually pull a Ozymandias/Doctor Manhattan move?

NTGYK

NTGYK

Attempted to circumvent ban with an alt-account
Banned
Oct 29, 2017
3,470
I was thinking about Thanos' motivations, if any, beyond 'intergalactic sociopathic dickhead'.

Thanos is a guy who pretty much puts his face out there any chance he gets. He leaves half the population of the planets he attacks alive to remember him. Doesn't give a shit about witnesses.

When he explains his genocidal plan to Stark, he says that the Infinity Gauntlet will be used to kill 50% of the population at random. Yet, he survives his finger snap at the end of the film. I'm wondering if beyond just 'more resources to go around for half the population', he stayed alive to make sure everyone has a 'common enemy' to unite against. It's the same move that Ozymandias/Doc Manhattan did at the end of the film adaptation of Watchmen, leaving the Americans and Russians to unite against the threat of Manhattan.
 
GrimGrinningGuy

GrimGrinningGuy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,506
Fantastapotamus said:
I mean, he's a purple space man. He's probably not worried about the FBI showing up to arrest him.
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thanos.jpg
 
VeryHighlander

VeryHighlander

The Fallen
May 9, 2018
6,431
Maybe he's alive to ensure the snap doesn't get undone. And it would be kind contradictory to the back story we already know, why would Thanos give a shit about uniting anybody?
 

Deleted member 7051

User requested account closure
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Oct 25, 2017
14,254
Thanos kinda seems to lack any degeee of self-awareness and legitimately believes what he's doing isn't just the only option, but that the universe will thank him for it.

He's completely insane.
 
Cat Party

Cat Party

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,490
Nah. Thanos seems to be sincere in his motivations. He doesn't see himself as a villain. He does things that cause harm to others, but he thinks it is better than the alternative.

And he does appear to have a strong sense of legacy. He wanted Gamora to carry on his work after him, for example.
 
Masterspeed

Masterspeed

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,827
England
IF he was like Ozy, he would of just done it right away. He'd fuck everything up to get his stones, no talking and just do the job and THEN explain why he did it.

Reading Watchmen for the first time and getting to that part blew me away. It was such a huge twist to me (This was before the movie was out and I didn't know anything about the story) I just expected the group to stop him and everything goes well, but boy oh boy was I wrong. Ozymandias was such a well thought out villain.
 
IggyChooChoo

IggyChooChoo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,230
Potterson said:
He is just stupid. He should CREATE more resources so everyone can live in peace.
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That would make a lot more sense. Also, even taken on its own terms, his plan is totally unsustainable. Whatever pressures caused "too much" life in the universe are still in place, so unless there's an endless quantity of stones and gauntlets to snap, the universe will be equally overpopulated in a few decades again anyway. Thanos should have just given the infinity gauntlet to some public health and family planning consultants.
 
subpar spatula

subpar spatula

Refuses to Wash his Ass
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
22,187
No. There wasn't a war between living and resources. Thanos just had a stupid plan that they wrapped in a hero's journey. Ozymandias knew that the Russian and American cold war almost certainly would lead to humanity's end. It's been proven time and time again that when a more public and bigger foe appears, enemies will appear as allies. Russia and basically everyone did this when the NAZIs gained power. Thanos has no reason to make himself an enemy of the people. He's just a dumb space alien wanting to fulfill some stupid desire to save people by killing half the people.

Thanos is only as good as his 50% snap: his character motivation and plan is completely stupid but since they made it into a journey it becomes sort of better.

Also, 99.99999999>% of the universe has zero idea who Thanos is. One day half their planet's living things just disappeared. If that happened on Earth, IRL, we'd think it was some type of biological disaster or something, not some giant bald space dude with 6 stones of Big Bang using their power to remove half of the universe's life.
 
Kirblar

Kirblar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
30,744
Iloelemen said:
He's a self-righteous delusional egomaniac.
He's the type who believes his own hype.
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He's also a murderous dictator who is obsessed with an incredibly stupid ideology that's attempting to solve a very real problem but is wholly incapable of doing so and only leaves sorrow in its wake.

It's why he's a good character, we've seen his type.
 
PSqueak

PSqueak

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,464
Platy said:
No, he is an asshole who has zero idea of what will actually do good for the universe
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Basically.

If they had gone with the classic "he has the hots for death" motivation he'd come as less of a moron.

Then again, you could say they're going hard with why he's called the "Mad Titan" and he literally is insane in thinking his idea was even remotely good.
 
Bramblebutt

Bramblebutt

Banned
Jan 11, 2018
1,858
It's fiction and he's the villain. No matter how many reasonable justifications the text makes for him, the subtextual language of the film means we can only assume he's wrong and our heroes are right, no matter how stupid that is. We will engineer evidence he's wrong outside of the bounds of the text before contradicting the emotional messaging.
 

Deleted member 7051

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,254
Bramblebutt said:
It's fiction and he's the villain. No matter how many reasonable justifications the text makes for him, the subtextual language of the film means we can only assume he's wrong and our heroes are right, no matter how stupid that is. We will engineer evidence he's wrong outside of the bounds of the text before contradicting the emotional messaging.
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I sure hope you're not implying that we're "engineering evidence" (aka making shit up) to claim murdering half a universe is wrong and expecting the survivors to give you the Nobel Peace Prize for your actions is daft beyond compare?
 
Parthenios

Parthenios

The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
13,630
It would be kinda neat if Endgame pulled a Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Show that the Snappening really did make everything better, but the Avengers fight to undo it anyway because the ends don't justify the means.
 
Bramblebutt

Bramblebutt

Banned
Jan 11, 2018
1,858
Winny（๑•̀ㅂ•́）و said:
I sure hope you're not implying that we're "engineering evidence" (aka making shit up) to claim murdering half a universe is wrong and expecting the survivors to give you the Nobel Peace Prize for your actions is daft beyond compare?
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I'm saying the content of a film's logic is almost always secondary to the film's emotional coding. I don't mean to imply that Thanos' motivations are airtight or justifiable, just that as the villain of a straightforward story, he would be the bad guy almost regardless what makes logical and ethical sense. The fictional world does not abide by the rules of the real world, and the events in the fiction only matter in as much as they serve to communicate a narrative. Whether you engage with the narrative emotionally matters more to establishing the villain's role than the internal logic of the villain itself, and that role will reinforce the argument that he's bad more than finding flaws in his thinking. Stuff like categorizing him as insane, megalomaniacal, aloof, cruel, evil, or stupid. These aren't reasoned arguments we make against a character's philosophy, they're roles we impose upon them because of how they make us feel.

This kind of thing is why propaganda works, because an audio visual medium can be used and abused to make even reasonable ethics seem hateful, insane, or frightening (or vice versa) just by context, association, and narrative.
 
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